


A Day In A Life

by ladyoneill



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Historical References, Melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:45:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian has lived for many years and will live for many more, never aging, never dying.  Nothing he experiences ever lingers for long, and nothing is really new to him.  Yet, he lives each day trying to find something unusual, something to make him want to wake to face the next day.  Some days he's more successful than on others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day In A Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> This is a bit angsty and bittersweet in places, at least to me. It begins the day after his night with Ethan so there are some memories of sex with a man, and mentions of sex with women, drugs, alcohol use. Nothing worse than on the show. I hope you like this look into Dorian's character.

Awakening alone to the sound of the clock chiming a quarter past one, Dorian stretches languidly as he turns onto his back. The little aches in his shoulders, his hips, the strain in his thigh muscles bring back the memory of the night before. Sliding one hand down his chest and below the sheet, he idly fondles his cock, enjoying the sensitivity, the pull of dried semen and the hint of slippery oil that remains.

Turning his face into the empty pillow beside his own, he drinks in the scent of man and whisky and tobacco, rich and dark.

He enjoyed himself the night before and during the early hours of the morning. More than he expected, but then when he invited Mr. Chandler to his rooms, he hadn't expected they would end up in this bed.

Hoped perhaps, but not expected. 

Dorian is pleased that his hopes won out.

As he rises from the bed to wrap a silk robe around his body, he wonders if it will happen again.

Perhaps, if it does, Ethan will fuck him.

A delicious shudder goes through him, and he progresses into his bathing chamber.

After his ablutions and a thorough, pleasureful examination of the finger shaped bruises on his pale skin that, sadly, fade too quickly, Dorian, again clad in the robe, slips into the secret room, pocketing the key, before moving to uncover the portrait.

Critically he examines the twisted, aged reflection of the man he sees in the mirror each day. It might be his imagination, but he thinks he spies a hint of the love bite on his throat, even as it disappears from his skin along with the sting. The eyes in the portrait perhaps show a bit more age, the lines at the corners of the mouth look slightly deeper.

Dorian tries not to look at the portrait more than once a month. He discovered early on that examining it every day revealed no changes to his jaded eyes, but if he lets time pass, he can see the dissolution he experiences, the days, weeks, months, years that age the painted image of himself.

By the time he recovers the portrait, he feels young and strong, every ache gone from his muscles, and, for a moment, he feels the disillusionment at how ephemeral everything has become.

In selling his soul for eternal youth, he didn't realize he wouldn't feel anything for long. Drink and drugs don't last. A split lip from a boxing match fades too quickly. The physical joy of sexual intercourse is usually gone by the time his partner, or partners, leave.

Every mark on his body disappears within hours, and anything he does to his body is but a distant memory by the same time the next day.

As Dorian summons a servant to bring him tea and a light meal along with the daily newspapers, he wonders if the day will come that he regrets the bargain he made. He knows that soon he will need to leave London again for a few years. He has made too many acquaintances over the past decade who any day could begin to wonder why he looks the same as when they met.

Perhaps he will move to the former colonies and lose himself in the wonders of the New World that he has only read about.

Maybe he will find more intriguing men such as Ethan Chandler waiting for him there.

When he inevitably returns to London, surely the entire world will have changed as this century passes into the next.

Nibbling on cold chicken and the last of the summer raspberries, Dorian peruses the neatly ironed newspapers. The Times contains dry and dreary news. The Daily Telegraph a few articles of interest. A handful of broadsheets provide momentary amusement, but mostly he finds the happenings in London and the world outside its confines dull and depressing.

As he finishes his light meal and wipes his fingers on a square of linen embroidered with his initials, a servant brings him the mail. The only item of interest is an invitation to a showing of Waterhouse's paintings at the Royal Academy the coming Saturday. An appreciation for fine art remains, and while the heyday of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which thirty years prior he was a member for a time, is over, their influence lingers.

The late afternoon shadows begin to seep into his morning room--an ironic name as he rarely spends any mornings awake let alone in this room--and he sets aside the mail to rise and go to the window to gaze over the garden. A light snow fell at some point, dusting the sleeping plants, coating the leafless limbs of the trees. An icicle hangs from the twined hands of two of the three Graces in the center of the garden.

For an instant Dorian feels as frozen as those lifeless statues and wonders what it would be like to be immobile but sentient, a mind trapped in a useless body.

A shudder passes through him and he tries to shake away the thought, its morbidity making him frown. Without the bargain and the portrait to take his aging, in a few decades that might have been him. A cold and lifeless statue.

Turning from the window in frustration, he moves to the tray of decanters and pours himself two fingers of eighteen year single malt Scotch. As it goes down his throat, it warms him and lingers. Yet, the taste and the warmth will fade too quickly, no matter if he drains the decanter and calls for another bottle. Any intoxication he feels will not last. If he slips into a drunken stupor, the dizziness will fade and he will awaken feeling refreshed.

So many years have passed he cannot recall how it feels to have an aching head from too much alcohol.

The melancholy is beginning to overwhelm him. He needs a distraction. Returning to his bedchamber, he summons his valet and dresses as he tries to decide on how to spend his evening. An East End pub? A trip to Whites? A cock fight? A hard gallop along Pall Mall? He has no desire for the theatre tonight, nor the patience for the lectures he saw advertised in the newspaper. Perhaps a brothel, but, low or high? Does he want to fuck a back alley whore or a prostitute of a higher class?

Does he want to fuck at all?

As his valet fastens his ascot with a jade pin, Dorian decides to let his mind wander and his feet take his body where they will.

Sometimes that is the only way he can be surprised.

Slipping into his dark gray wool great coat and pulling on black leather gloves, he accepts a sable fur hat from his footman before stepping out into the dusk of a London winter evening.

The air is crisp, quickly pinking his cheeks, and smells of smoke and humanity. As Dorian walks away from his Mayfair townhouse, he empties his mind and relies on his senses to take him somewhere interesting.

After awhile, the aroma of richly cooked meat pies hits him, making his stomach growl and his mouth go dry. As his eyes take in the sight of a well-lit public house, the sounds of laughter and the clink of glassware draw him inside.

A new place, new people--an interesting mingling of middle class and lower gentry, a few beautiful women in brocade and fur, others in cheaper cotton and wool. Men of all types and ages.

And an array of tantalizing meat pies and ales.

A good place for the night. Dorian will see where the food and companionship takes him.

Hopefully into a moment of complete newness, even if it will not last save in his memories.

End


End file.
